Selmer residents concerned with city’s storm damage cleanup plan

July 8, 2025

Ryan Brooks,

SELMER, Tenn. — Selmer is still picking up the pieces due to catastrophic storm damage from earlier this year, but as they try to move forward issues have arisen.

In Selmer Mayor Sherry Inman’s initiative to clear storm damage, a team was put in place with TDEC, air pollution, and waste management along with other agencies to approve a burn site to get rid of miscellaneous waste, rubble and vegetative debris following the aftermath of severe weather.

While previous inspections and evaluations have been performed at the site and on equipment being used for the clean up process, some residents are concerned with location of the site and the potential of polluting the quality of air.

“If we need to change something we will. If it works out that today, after our meeting with the people that are coming down to reevaluate everything, talk with us and look at the site we’ll know how to move forward because we have stopped the pick-up today and yesterday,” said Mayor Inman. “We are bringing that debris here, and as you can see in the background, we have a worker that is going through and separating it and we have just started last monday. So, if you can see how much the pile is, we’ve brought over 15,000 cubic tons of the debris.”

We asked one homeowner that also owns livestock beside the burn site their experiences since this process started.

“We had a lot of the soot and ash on our cars and everything outside. Like, I grab my trash cans one morning and my hand was black covered in soot. I have to change the goats’ water multiple time a day because of the soot, and ash that is flying in the air. It gets in their water. It makes their water murky. It gets real smokey in our yard. It comes in like intervals while they’re burning and it will be like 20 minutes and it’ll clear up, and then it’ll come back in another 20 minutes and clear up again,” said a local homeowner.

Mayor Inman tells us this using this site is saving taxpayers dollars.

“Put the pencil to the paper of how much it was going to cost us for the contractor to bring it here instead of having to truck it either to Jackson, Tennessee to the landfill or to Walnut, Mississippi to that area. That’s going to cost–could be double, could be triple. You’re going to be looking up into $1 million or more,” said Mayor Inman.

We visited several residents in the area of Dancer Road and Hester Road in Selmer. One neighbor, who chose not to appear on camera, says he’s dealt with displaced debris around his street and his home for more than three months with no help and little progress.